A lesson to be gleaned from “Charlotte Rampling: The Look,”
Angelina Maccarone’s fascinating and frustrating documentary portrait of an
enigmatic star, might be that it would be foolish to suppose that Ms. Rampling
is anything like the transgressive women she portrays on the screen. The same
is true of her photographic image, that of a heavy-lidded femme fatale. Could
“The Look” be an accident of physiognomy? In this evasive film neither the
director nor the star is about to speculate.

Ms. Rampling, now 65, belongs to the short list of cult
movie actresses whose combination of

exotic beauty, intelligence and fierce independence lends
them a particular erotic mystique. Along with Jeanne Moreau and Isabelle
Huppert, she is a screen personality whose smoldering characters project an
imperial confidence tinged with disdain. Those catlike eyes, lowered in a seemingly
seductive gaze in tandem with a Mona Lisa smirk, send the same danger signals
associated with Ms. Rampling’s Hollywood prototype, Lauren Bacall. Both also
have deep voices that convey an ominous authority.

Ms. Rampling’s greatest screen performance, a clip from
which is included in “The Look,” may be her portrayal of Ellen, an unmarried
New England professor of French literature in Laurent Cantet’s “Heading South.”
Ellen is the queen bee among a group of middle-aged women who make an annual
pilgrimage to a resort in Haiti in the late 1970s to avail themselves of the
sexual favors of handsome impoverished beach boys. It is hard to imagine Ms.
Rampling as anything like Ellen.

Ms. Maccarone’s admiring study catches Ms. Rampling in
conversation with friends and artists on different topics — “Exposure,” “Age,”
“Beauty,” “Resonance,” “Taboo,” “Demons,” Desire,” “Death” and “Love” — which
the film uses as pretentious chapter titles. The conversations are interspersed
with scenes from Ms. Rampling’s films, including Woody Allen’s “Stardust
Memories”; Luchino Visconti’s “Damned”; François Ozon’s “Swimming Pool” and
“Under the Sand”; Silvio Narizzano’s “Georgy Girl,” the 1966 British film that made
her star; and Liliana Cavani’s “Night Porter,” in which she plays a
concentration camp survivor who reunites years later in a Vienna hotel with the
sadistic Nazi guard (Dirk Bogarde) who tormented her.

Rounding out the list are “The Verdict” (Sidney Lumet) and
“Max Mon Amour,” Nagisa Oshima’s comedy in which she plays a diplomat’s wife
who has a passionate affair with a chimpanzee. Conspicuously missing is her
recent cameo in Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime.”

The conversations seem unrehearsed. Although Ms. Rampling
has more to say on some topics than on others, there are no blinding
revelations or titillating confessions. Talking with the photographer Peter
Lindbergh in “Exposure,” she remarks, “If you want to give anything worthwhile
of yourself, you have to feel completely exposed.” For her nudity seems never to
have been a big deal. The “Taboo” segment examines a risqué series of
self-portraits, “Louis XV,” that the German fashion photographer Juergen Teller
shot.

For all her readiness to bare her flesh, Ms. Rampling
reveals little of her inner life, and the film stints on biographical
information. The closest thing to a nugget of wisdom is her stated belief in
not running away from emotional pain. You should “let it happen to you,” she
declares.

Her scattered observations on life, love and death are
eminently sensible, rooted in an unflappable self-possession. She makes one
reference to the emotional “chaos” of her younger days and more than one to her
sister’s suicide at the age of 23, but her tone is dispassionate. Her major
relationships — with the actor and publicist Bryan Southcombe; the French
composer Jean-Michel Jarre; and to her current longtime companion, Jean-Noël
Tassez, a French businessman — go unmentioned. Many of the artists and intellectuals
with whom she converses are barely introduced, if at all.

This is not to say that “Charlotte Rampling: The Look” is a
complete washout. A tease is more like it, an examination of the surface. Ms.
Rampling is presented as an endlessly watchable mystery, an aloof but affable
sphinx. But we knew that already.

CHARLOTTE RAMPLING: THE LOOK

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Angelina Maccarone; director of
photography, Bernd Meiners; edited by Bettina Böhler; music by Judith Kaufmann;
produced by Charlotte Uzu, Gerd Haag, Michael Trabitzsch and Serge Lalou;
released by Kino Lorber. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1
hour 34 minutes. This film is not rated.

A version of this review appears in print on November 4, 2011,
on page C12 of the New York edition with

Charlotte Rampling: 'I know my power'

Her chilly sensuality has
hooked directors from Woody Allen to Lars von Trier. Charlotte Rampling talks
to Catherine Shoard about her no-go areas, Hollywood 'crap' – and why we might
not like her new documentary

If you were to create an installation that captured the
essence of Charlotte Rampling, it would almost certainly involve a stuffed lion
and a king-sized bed. And you'd probably place them not in a room, but by a
bar, on a beach, at the French Riviera. In this way you'd convey the imperious
gloss, the fearsome sensuality, the hint of the ridiculous in Rampling's
eat-you-for-breakfast pose.

As luck would have it, this is exactly the scene when we sit
down to talk in Cannes. There is a stuffed lion, there is a king-sized bed.
Impervious to the taxidermical horror behind her, Rampling perches on a pouffe
and fixes me with her laser gaze. The lion peeps over her shoulder; by
comparison, he is a pussycat.

Rampling, now 65, is all over this year's festival: she is
drumming up interest in Julia, a thriller by her son Barnaby Southcombe, as
well as promoting Lars von Trier's Palme d'Or contender Melancholia, in which
she plays a woman based on the director's own mother. "She's dead, so he
can do it now," she explains. "He hated her. She ruined his life, he
said."

It's a small role, yet still a recognisable Rampling
monster: all lipstick and bitterness and icy outbursts. So recognisable, in
fact, that a ripple of laughter greeted her first line at yesterday's press
screening. "Domineering? What a load of crap," she says when her
ex-husband (John Hurt) describes her as such in a speech at the wedding of
their daughter (Kirsten Dunst).

Rampling is also the subject of a new documentary, The Look,
which is screening out of competition. The title comes from two-time co-star
Dirk Bogarde, who once wrote: "I have seen the Look under many different
circumstances . . . The glowing emerald eyes turn to steel within a second,
[and] fade gently to the softest, tenderest, most doe-eyed bracken-brown."
The film features plenty more like this: Paul Auster, a friend, tells her that
she is more beautiful now than she was as a young woman. A group of elderly men
who bump into her in the Tuileries garden in Paris are delighted when she gives
one of them a kiss.

Shot by German newcomer Angelina Maccarone, The Look carries
Rampling's "absolute stamp of approval"; the actor had final cut.
"It was simply a condition of my involvement," Rampling says evenly.
"If this film is about me then I have to accept it, and if I can't accept
it, I have to know it can be destroyed. I'd rather it didn't exist if it wasn't
something I couldn't recognise as being in some way close to who I am."

Not everyone has the confidence to be so unapologetically
controlling, but Rampling has form. Last year, she made headlines when an
attempt to co-author an autobiography with a friend came undone, ending in
legal action. "A lot of people have asked me to do written things or have
someone else write them for me," she says. "I've tried lots,
nothing's worked. I can't express what I want to express yet."

She says she wasn't interested in Maccarone making a
conventional documentary. "If you were to find all the people I've worked
with and ask them what they think of me, they're all just going to say, 'Oh,
wonderful', and it'll just be a lot of blah." So instead we have eight
conversations between Rampling and one or other of her pals, each with a
particular theme, sometimes involving a bottle of red, always drawing on one of
her landmark performances. She talks exposure with the photographer Peter
Lindbergh, as well as her breakthrough role in Georgy Girl. She hops aboard
Auster's houseboat in Brooklyn to chew the fat about getting old. The subject
of taboo is put to bed with the artist Juergen Teller, who shot her (and
himself) naked for a 2004 fashion campaign. Cue footage of her two films with
Bogarde: Visconti's The Damned, in which she played a young wife sent to a Nazi
concentration camp; and Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter, featuring Rampling
as a former camp inmate in a sadomasochistic relationship with her ex-guard.
The film ends with the theme of love, a conversation with French
writer-director Joy Fleury and Fleury's daughter, spliced with footage from
Max, Mon Amour, starring Rampling as a diplomat's wife besotted with a chimp.

The Look is an unsettling film, even at its cosiest.
Evidently, Rampling wants to make some kind of personal statement after years
of submitting to the vision of others, but it is also incredibly exposing. So
this is what makes her tick, these are her friends, her family, her
confidantes, her concerns. And this is the look, the side of herself, that
Rampling thinks the most flattering – or at least the one she wants to share
with the world. Did she have any doubts about making it quite so intimate?

"I needed those types of people," she says.
"Otherwise it would have been false. At one stage, it was suggested one of
them might be a well-known actress, and I thought, 'I don't think it would
really work.' I know a lot of actresses, but I don't have that kind of
relationship with them." Why not? "Perhaps there's a competitivity,
something animal there."

In Cannes, the film has been warmly received. Is she
expecting a British audience to be tougher? There is a pause. "Possibly
England might not like it. Although it's not French, they'd say it's
self-indulgent, chatting away about oneself. The British can be like that. They
can put barriers up on certain interesting pieces of cinema for that reason –
it's a pity."

'I'm not staying in this madhouse'

Rampling was born in Essex, the daughter of a colonel and a
painter. She still keeps a flat in London, but has been based abroad since the
late 60s, working in Italy, and then relocating to France with her second
husband, Jean-Michel Jarre, in 1976. They divorced some 20 years later; since
then she has been engaged to the Parisian tycoon Jean-Noël Tassez.

She says she is comfortable Channel-straddling: it means she
has stranger status wherever she is, an extra edge of mystery. In France, she
is known simply as La Legende; in Britain, she stands on the edgy end of
national treasure. (Some years ago, Barry Norman coined the verb "to
rample", which he defined as "an ability to reduce a man to
helplessness though a chilly sensuality".)

This duality also aids Rampling's inbuilt contrarianism.
"Ever since I was a small child I've had this feeling – it's in my nature,
and so it's not even pretentious – that if everyone's going one way I will go
the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance. That's how I can keep myself
alive and interested and my emotions going. I could have been a superstar in
America – I was certainly taken out there. But I said, 'No way, Jose, I'm not
staying here in this madhouse.' So I left and I said, 'I'm gonna make arthouse
films now.' I'm gonna find directors that want me for deeper things than all
this crap. I knew I couldn't survive in Hollywood, actually. It would send me
really round the bend."

She speaks with the certainty of someone who is rarely
disagreed with, though what she says is essentially true: Woody Allen, for one,
adjusted the schedule of Stardust Memories to fit around Rampling's diary, so
that she could play his dream woman. The world has been her oyster; it's just
that she has sometimes opted not to shuck it.

In the past, Rampling has said that her choice of roles is
dictated not by a desire to entertain, nor by financial imperative, but as a
means of self-examination, a way of testing her own limits. (A breakdown in the
early 80s, following the birth of her second son, only amplified that impulse.)
She laughs when I ask if this is still what drives her – less gravelly now, a
touch more grandmotherly. "Yes, that's one of those grand statements I
make. I must explore desert ground and see what can grow. But there are limits.
I know in my heart what I would never do." What's that? "It's very
simple. I'm actually very straight. In all areas. Funnily enough. But my
straightness allows me to be incredibly daring in where I'm prepared to
go."

She grins, and concedes that some instances of this licence
to be daring are less radical than others – a cameo in Streetdance 3D, for
example. But there is one surprising no-go area. Rampling shudders at the
memory of watching Angelina Jolie process up the red carpet for Terrence
Malick's The Tree of Life the previous evening. "She must have been there
20 minutes. And when I thought about what it meant, being there for all that
time, not even speaking, I thought: Well, that's what I never, ever could do. I
know the power of my look, of who I am. And I'll turn it on for the film or the
photo session. But it's a question of knowing what you can and can't take. It
would burn me. I would be absolutely burned."

Wednesday, 26 February 2014

The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that
Shook the Nation

by Harold Schechter

Beekman Place, once one of the most exclusive addresses in
Manhattan, had a curious way of making it into the tabloids in the 1930s:
“SKYSCRAPER SLAYER,” “BEAUTY SLAIN IN BATHTUB” read the headlines. On Easter
Sunday in 1937, the discovery of a grisly triple homicide at Beekman Place
would rock the neighborhood yet again—and enthrall the nation. The young man
who committed the murders would come to be known in the annals of American
crime as the Mad Sculptor.

Caught up in the Easter Sunday slayings was a bizarre and
sensationalistic cast of characters, seemingly cooked up in a tabloid editor’s
overheated imagination. The charismatic perpetrator, Roger Irwin, was a
brilliant young sculptor who had studied with some of the masters of the era.
But with his genius also came a deeply disturbed psyche; Irwin was obsessed
with sexual self-mutilation and was frequently overcome by outbursts of violent
rage.

Irwin’s primary victim, Veronica Gedeon, was a figure from
the world of pulp fantasy—a stunning photographer's model whose scandalous
seminude pinups would titillate the public for weeks after her death. Irwin’s
defense attorney, Samuel Leibowitz, was a courtroom celebrity with an unmatched
record of acquittals and clients ranging from Al Capone to the Scottsboro Boys.
And Dr. Fredric Wertham, psychiatrist and forensic scientist, befriended Irwin
years before the murders and had predicted them in a public lecture months
before the crime.

Based on extensive research and archival records, The Mad
Sculptor recounts the chilling story of the Easter Sunday murders—a case that
sparked a nationwide manhunt and endures as one of the most engrossing American
crime dramas of the twentieth century. Harold Schechter’s masterful prose
evokes the faded glory of post-depression New York and the singular madness of
a brilliant mind turned against itself. It will keep you riveted until the very
last page.

On Easter Sunday in 1937, police were called to the scene of
a triple homicide at an apartment in a fashionable Manhattan neighborhood. The
victims were Veronica "Ronnie" Gedeon, a pretty young model who'd
earned her living posing, often in dishabille or even nude, for the popular
detective magazines of the day; Mary Gedeon, Veronica's mother, who was
separated from her husband; and their boarder, an Englishman by the name of
Frank Byrnes. The two women had been strangled to death, their lodger beaten
and stabbed in the back of the head, and while the police questioned an array
of possible perps, they really had no solid suspects. Until, that is, a close
examination of Veronica's diary pointed them to Robert Irwin, a handsome young
sculptor who had once dated Veronica's sister, Ethel. Irwin, an talented young
artist who had trained under two of America's most prominent and successful
commercial sculptors, was known for his off-the-wall ideas about art,
metaphysics and religion, and life in general. Not only that, he was known to
have a violent and uncontrollable temper, and there was reason to believe that
he held a grudge against the family for encouraging Ethel to break off her
relationship with him. How police tie Irwin to the murders and the efforts to
bring him to justice form the focus of Harold Schechter's THE MAD SCULPTOR: THE
MANIAC, THE MODEL, AND THE MURDER THAT SHOOK THE NATION, a true-crime book that
far outranks most others of the genre in terms of both quality and readability.

One thing that makes THE MAD SCULPTOR the cream of the
true-crime crop is that author Schechter, a professor of American literature
and culture at Queens College in New York, did extensive scholarly research to
ensure that the facts of the case are accurate. But it's clear that he didn't
just limit himself to researching the details of the murder alone. Schechter
researched the historical context surrounding the crime, too, uncovering the
bits and pieces that made up the patchwork of American culture at the time. And
he also uncovered plenty of information about the secondary players in the
case: Irwin's parents, defense lawyer Samuel Leibowitz, psychiatrist Fredric
Wertham, and newspapermen Harry Romanoff and John Dienhart, to name just a few.
Thus, instead of giving readers the expanded tabloid version offered by most of
today's true-crime books, Schechter offers up a riveting story with a richly
detailed setting and fully three-dimensional characters. In other words, THE
MAD SCULPTOR reads more like a historical novel--but one that is completely
factual--instead of a stodgy history book or a stoic fact-by-fact news report.

So, by the time you've finished THE MAD SCULPTOR: THE
MANIAC, THE MODEL, AND THE MURDER THAT SHOOK THE NATION, you'll feel like
you've actually taken a trip back to Depression-era America. You'll feel you
got to know the mad sculptor Robert Irwin and his victims, and you'll have more
than an inkling of how the social and cultural environment in which they lived
enabled such a crime to occur. You'll also have gotten a glimpse inside the
heads of the attorneys, psychiatrists, police officers, judges, newspaper
reporters, and the like, and you'll understand why some of them had sympathy
for Irwin while others wanted to send him straight to the electric chair.
You'll come away feeling like you were an insider in the case rather than a
casual spectator, and isn't that what we fans of true crime really want--to see
the crime and the players from the inside out so that we can try to make sense
of it all? If you answered yes, then you'll definitely want to pick up a copy
of Schechter's book.

HAROLD SCHECHTER is a professor of American literature at
Queens College, CUNY. He is best known for his historical true-crime writing
and for reference works such as The A-to-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers and
The Serial Killer Files. Robert Kolker is a New York magazine contributing
editor, a finalist for the National Magazine Award, and the author of Lost
Girls. He writes frequently about issues surrounding criminal justice and the
unforeseen impact of extraordinary events on everyday people. He lives with his
family in Brooklyn. - http://powerhousearena.com/events/book-launch-the-mad-sculptor-by-harold-schecter-with-robert-kolker/

Desmond FitzGerald liked to introduce himself as a boarding
house-keeper; under no illusion about title or inheritance, life was about
effort, purpose, inquiry and not a little fun along the way. This attitude made
an indelible mark within and beyond these shores.

Despite being a prolific collector and writer on Irish art,
architecture, furniture and decorative arts, his collaborator on Painters Of
Ireland, Professor Anne Cruickshank, confesses they knew little of the subject
before they began research on the seminal book.

In this tribute to the Knight of Glin, Robert O'Byrne
provides a rare insight into the early years and his developing taste and
interests. O'Byrne demonstrates a clear grasp of the influences which came to
bear on his passion for Irish heritage. Entitled The Last Knight, it celebrates
a unique man without whom Ireland's art historical publishing would be sadly
lacking and many architectural treasures would be a pile of rubble.

A photograph of a young Knight graces the cover, the epitome
of golden youth framed in a castellated manor, he cuts a handsome figure and
grasps a pike as if symbolising his defence of Irish heritage. A large key
dangles from his finger – custodian and host, he kept open house for all who shared
his interest and passion.

Tender insights are revealed in letters to his mother,
Veronica, written while he was only 12 at Stowe school. They convey the
loneliness of a boy away from home, his father dead and his mother in a distant
place; he collects rare coins, developing his keen sense of value and rarity.
It is not long, however, before Desmond is in Harvard, dating beautiful
debutantes, establishing lifelong links with America or back in London leading
the 1960s celebutantes. His first marriage to the beautiful and eccentric
LouLou de la Falaise was short lived, though they remained friends and her
death came but a few months after his.

While at the Victoria and Albert Museum he worked with great
names of art and architectural research, Mark Girouard, John Pope-Hennessy, and
developed a lasting friendship with the indomitable Maurice Craig. He married
the love of his life, Olda Willes, the relationship that endured and supported
all else. Photographs throughout the book provide a wonderful narrative, while
Olda's beauty shines through the ages.

The Last Knight: A Celebration Of Desmond Fitzgerald

Friday 29 November

Desmond FitzGerald, 29th Knight of Glin can be acclaimed for
having achieved an astonishing amount prior to his death in September 2011. As
an architectural and art historian, he was among the first to recognise and
celebrate the work of Irish artists and craftsmen, bringing this to the
attention of an international audience. As an advocate of architectural
conservation and preservation, especially through his work as President of the
Irish Georgian Society, he worked tirelessly to ensure a future for the
country's architectural heritage. As a collector and tastemaker, he equally
helped to encourage greater appreciation at home and abroad of Ireland's
outstanding artists, architects and designers over many centuries. The Last
Knight, by Robert O’Byrne, will examine and celebrate all these aspects of
Desmond FitzGerald's life, and serve as a rallying call for the present
generation to emulate his work. Published by the Irish Georgian Society,
members attending dinner will be invited to share a pre dinner drink at a
private launch for this wonderful book with all proceeds from the book's sale
going to benefit the Irish Georgian Society. Full details will be sent with
dinner acknowledgement.

The Knight of Glin (dormant or extinct 14 September 2011),
also known as the Black Knight, or Knight of the Valley was a hereditary title in the FitzGerald
families of County Limerick, Ireland, since the early 14th century. The family
was a branch of the FitzGerald dynasty, or Geraldines, related to the Earls of
Desmond (extinct), who were questionably granted extensive lands in County
Limerick by the Duke of Normandy by way of conquest. The title was named after
the village of Glin, near the Knight's lands. The Knight of Glin was properly
addressed as "Knight" (not, as one might expect, "Sir xxxx
FitzGerald").

The family name "FitzGerald" comes from the
(Norman) French "Fils du Gerald", i.e. "Son of Gerald".

"The coat-of-arms of the Glin family is: Ermine a
saltier gules. Crest: a boar passant gules, bristled and armed or. Motto:
Sahnit a Boo. The arms of the various families in Ireland are similar. The
Knights of Glin bear as supporters two griffins collared and chained, and have
a second crest: a castle with two towers, issuant from the sinister tower a
knight in armor holding in the dexter hand a key proper. The Glin family seat
is at Glin, Glin Castle, county Limerick, Ireland."

Like the Knights of Kerry, the Knights of Glin descended
from one of the younger or illegitimate sons of The 1st Baron Desmond and
Honora (daughter of Hugh O'Connor, of Kerry) thus Kings of Connacht. Lord
Desmond was also known as Sir John Fitz-John or Seán Mór na Sursainge, and he
lived c. 1260. The last knight, Desmond FitzGerald, 29th Knight of Glin, died
on September 14, 2011.

This Desmond family are descended from Maurice FitzGerald,
Lord of Lanstephan, a companion-in-arms of Strongbow Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl
of Pembroke, the Norman conqueror of Ireland. Went to Ireland in 1168, being
sent with ten knights, twenty esquires, and one hundred archers, to assist
Dermot MacMurrough, king of Leinster. He died 1 September 1177, buried in the
friary of the Grey Friars of Wexford. Maurice was the second son of Gerald de
Windsor, Constable of Pembroke, Wales and his wife given to him by Plantagenet
Norman English King Henry II, the South Welsh Princess Nesta or Nest ferch Rhys
thus descended from Howell the Good, king of the Britons who codified Welsh
Law. Maurice FitzGerald's children were: Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, justice of
Ireland, who built the castle of Sligo and is ancestor of the Dukes of
Leinster. William, Baron of Naas, county Kildare, and ancestor of the Viscount
Gormanston. Thomas FitzMaurice FitzGerald married Elinor, daughter of Jordan de
Marisco, and sister to Herve de Monte Marisco, constable of Ireland, and of
Geoffrey de Marisco, Lord Justice of Ireland in the reign of King John. He died
1207.

John FitzGerald, 1st Baron Desmond, of Shanid, County
Limerick, Lord of Connelloe and Decies, married (first) Margery, daughter and
heir of Sir Thomas Fitz-Anthony, Lord of Decies and Desmond. These domains were
confirmed to him by Prince Edward, the Black Prince in 1260. He married
(second) Honora, daughter of Hugh O'Connor, of Kerry. By his first wife he had
a son: 1. Maurice Fitz-John FitzGerald, who was Lord of Decies and Desmond, and
ancestor of the FitzGeralds, Earls of Desmond, who ranked among the most
powerful nobles of Ireland for more than two centuries. By his second wife he
had issue: 2. Gilbert Fitz-John, ancestor of the White Knight. 3. Sir John
Fitz-John, mentioned below. 4. Maurice Fitz-John, ancestor of the Knights of
Kerry. 5. Thomas Fitz-John, ancestor of the Fitzgerald of the Island of Kerry.

John Fitz-Thomas FitzGerald, by virtue of his royal
seigniory as a Count Palatine, created three of his sons by the second
marriage, knights; and their descendants have been so styled in acts of parliament,
patents under the great seal, and all legal proceedings, up to the present
(1910) time. He founded the monastery of Tralee, and was buried there in 1260.

(VII) Sir John Fitz-John, Knight, was the first Knight of
Glin, and had from his father the castles of Glincarbery and Beagh, county
Limerick, Ireland. Children: John Fitz-John, mentioned below. Gerald Fitz-John,
ancestor of the family of Clenlish and Castle Ishen, County Cork, Baronets.

VIII) Sir John Fitz-John del Glin was succeeded by his son.

"The earliest tradition I could find about Glin went
back to 1569, when the [15th] knight, Thomas FitzGerald[disambiguation needed],
was barbarously executed in Limerick. His mother, who was present at the
execution, seized his head when he was beheaded and drank his blood. She then
collected the parts of his dismembered body and put them in a linen sheet. When
she set out for home with her precious burden she was followed by an immense
concourse, including one hundred keening women.

Somewhere east of Foynes some soldiers tried to seize the
corpse and in the fight that followed many people were slain. The body was
interred in Lislaughtin Abbey in the tomb of his relative, the O'Connor
Kerry."

According to another legend, in the early 16th century under
Elizabeth I, England set about enforcing loyalty in the western parts of
Ireland. When one of her ships came up to the Knight of Glin's castle on the
Shannon Estuary, a fierce battle ensued. The ship's captain managed to capture
one of the Knight's sons and sent the Knight a message that he should surrender
or else the son would be put in one of the ship's cannons and fired against the
castle wall. He replied that as he was virile and his wife was strong, it would
be easy to produce another son.

The tradition about the siege of Glin castle differs in many
respects from the facts as given by Carew in Pacata Hibernia. We do know that
tradition can be a completely distorting mirror, but the popular memory of a
local event such as a battle, siege or massacre would be more vivid and more
lasting and in essence more trustworthy than Carew's narrative, who was
prejudiced and gives a complete travesty of the facts.

The garrison of the castle, according to tradition, was
divided into two sections, one of which was commanded by Donall na Searrach
Culhane and the other by Tadhg Dore. Before the siege began, Carew, who had the
knight's child as hostage, sent an order to the knight to surrender the castle
at once or else he would blow the child out of the mouth of the cannon. The
knight's answer was remembered but can only be rendered here by algebraic
symbols: Gread leat. Ta X go meidhreach fos agus Y go briomhar. Is fuiriste
leanbh eile do gheiniuint.

The assault on the castle then began under the command of
Capt. Flower but was beaten back with slaughter by the defenders. Three
brothers named Giltenan played a heroic part in repulsing the attack and slew
some of the best of Flower's men. Carew called up fresh reinforcements, which
he placed under the leadership of Turlough Roe MacMahon, who lived at
Colmanstown castle, County Clare, almost opposite Glin. Turlough was a man of
evil reputation who had already committed many dreadful crimes against his own
kith and kin and against the Irish people at large. He was the father of the
celebrated Maire Ruadh MacMahon. He is referred to in a poem of the time as

Traolach Ruadh an fhill agus an eithigh

do mhairbh a bhean agus a leanbh in eineacht.

The second assault also failed, but Turlough was determined
to carry it through , for he hated with a hatred which evil men are known to
feel towards those they have mortally injured. In the meantime the cannonading
had played havoc with the defences of the castle. In the third attempt MacMahon
was able to move in a large body of men who, after a gallant defence by the
garrison, succeeded in capturing the castle. The Giltenans, Tadhg Dore and his
brother, and Donall Culhane and two of his sons were slain in the final
defence. Some of the garrison tried to escape by jumping into the water surrounding
the castle, but only three men succeeded in getting away. These were Mahon
Dillane, Lewy O'Connor and Donall Beag Culhane (whose father was slain in the
last defence of the castle).

The "Old Castle" of Glin, the scene of the above
battle, is a ruin. The tower still stands with a historic plaque in place.
After the destruction of the old castle, the Knights built the "New
Castle", a beautiful Georgian mansion, on the banks of the Shannon Estuary
about a mile west of the old site. The last Knight lived there until his death
(as well as in Dublin and London).

The 17th Knight, Gerald FitzGerald, was a Member for
Limerick County in the Irish Patriot Parliament of 1689, called by James II
during the Williamite war.

Under the Penal Laws of the 18th century, the Knights
converted to the Church of Ireland to preserve their property. The surrounding
villagers remained Roman Catholics, a division indicated today by the two
churches in the village of Glin.

Following the war of independence and during the ensuing
Civil War, in the early 1920s, Irish Republican Army (IRA) soldiers, from
nearby North Kerry came to the 27th Knight Desmond FitzJohn Lloyd FitzGerald to
tell him that no one whose title to land came from the English Crown could keep
their land. The Knight immediately produced a document in Latin, supposedly
from Duke of Normandy, indicating that his title did not originate from the
English Crown at all. The baffled IRA men left the Knight with his properties,
which he holds to this day. Another version of the incident relates how the
then Knight, who was an invalid and used a wheelchair, refused to leave the
mansion when ordered to do so, as the IRA intended to set it alight. He
insisted on staying, they left, and the mansion still stands.

The 29th and last Knight (dormant or extinct) was Desmond
FitzGerald, son of Desmond Wyndham Otho FitzGerald, 28th Knight of Glin. He had
a MFA degree from Harvard University. He was married, firstly in 1966, to
Louise Vava Henriette Lucie Le Bailly de La Falaise, the daughter of Count
Alain de la Falaise and his wife, the former Maxime Birley. By his second, the
former Olda Ann Willes, whom he married in 1970, he had three daughters: Catherine
(previously married to Edward Lambton, 7th Earl of Durham, remarried in 2010 to
Dominic West, Nesta and Honor. He represented the art auctioneers Christies in
Ireland and was elected president of the Irish Georgian Society. Since he had
no male heir, the title Knight of Glin became apparently dormant or extinct. There
has been some speculation[by whom?] that there is an heir male of the body
needing to prove their claim to the title, surviving through the 24th Knight of
Glin, Lt. Col. John Fraunceis FitzGerald's second son Edmond Urmston McLeod
FitzGerald, who was born in 1817 at Glin Castle and who married Ellen Sullivan,
born in Ireland, 1822, died in Ogdensburg, New York, United States, in December
1895. Children, born in Ireland: Edmond Urmston, deceased. Richard, mentioned
below. John Fraunceis, living in Ogdensburgh, Margaret. Gerald, who died in
Ireland.